NGO's more harm than good? Or more good than harm?

bolueeleh · Post by **bolueeleh** » Sat May 28, 2016 8:33 am

obviously my method of helping them is more productive

mammothboy2 · Post by **mammothboy2** » Sun May 29, 2016 8:03 pm

There is a spitting bitch-slap in the UK Guardian
about the blessed AJ being awarded a visiting professorship at the
London School of Economics

Here is one contribution to a snapping and snarling:

Jolee's humanitarian interest started a decade and a half ago. Visiting, at length, a number of countries with difficult circumstances. She paid her own fares, lived in whatever accommodation UNHCR field staff were using, and donated the largest ever individual donation of the UNHCR. Over the next decade she did 40 missions in 30 countries, wrote a book and made humanitarian-based films. She has visited warzones that have seen aid workers killed during her visit. She then got a pilot's licence, and bought planes, so she could get involved in ferrying people around. After a decade of actual field work - rather than being a "sporadic luvvie" she was promoted to rank of Special Envoy to High Commissioner António Guterres. She now represents Guterres and UNHCR at the diplomatic level. In that role she has done the thick end of a score of missions all over the world, with special focus on refugees. She has started, and still runs, conservation efforts in Asia and Africa; and she lobbied (successfully) the American political class on immigration for vulnerable children. She has co-chaired Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) for years (a network of top lawyers who represent undocumented refugee children, by far the largest of its kind ) before it she did the same role for the UN. She has also started child-protection and women-protection organisations for the likes of Haiti and other disaster zones, spoke to the G8 and UN about sexual violence in conflict zones, chaired the largest ever UN summit on sexual violence in warzones and got the widest ever UN declaration on the subject. She's on the Council of Foreign Relations, among other political bodies.

And I'm just skimming here. A summary. An overview.

Her visiting professorship is for a contribution to a postgraduate degree program at the LSE's Centre on Women, Peace and Security.

I can think of few people more qualified.

Since the last summary got my entire post erased, I'll phrase it this way: perhaps the problem here isn't Jolee but Jealousy?

phuketrichard · Post by **phuketrichard** » Sun May 29, 2016 9:15 pm

LINK?

she has done more good for the UNHCR than u ever could even dream off

mammothboy2 · Post by **mammothboy2** » Mon May 30, 2016 7:17 am

As requested:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -education

she even has a bit of Cambodia named after her ...

mammothboy2 · Post by **mammothboy2** » Mon May 30, 2016 7:30 am

Not ALL Guardianistas are enthralled about AJ's appointment:

Appointments like this take jobs away from early and later career researchers who are currently struggling for work in vast numbers due to the ever-increasing casualisation of contracts and slashing of budgets.

While I don't necessarily deny that her experiences could be interesting or informative for a group of postgraduate students, they are far better suited to a one off visiting lecture. Will she be marking students' essays? Going to faculty meetings? Performing all the other admin duties visiting professors are required to do? I highly doubt it. That will no doubt be done by an early career researcher like me or a postgraduate TA who will gain nothing professionally from the experience but needs the work too badly to turn it down in favour of, say, working on their own publications or research which might further their career and put them on the path to the increasingly rare full-time positions.

Will Jolie be researching and publishing while she teaches? That is the basis for good university level teaching, particularly at a postgrad level, and I really doubt she will be doing it. We as academics are expected to research and publish alongside our teaching, and while things such as the requirements of the REF have put demands on us that make devoting the kind of time both excellent research and teaching require very difficult, Jolie will not be subject to research requirements meaning that her teaching will be neither as up to date nor as meaningful as that of academics who do.

This kind of celebrity appointment is insulting to those of us who have spent 8+ years (for that is the education requirement to even be considered for an academic job at any level) training and researching to become academics. It is further evidence of a very damaging culture within the higher education sector in this country which has been brought on by excessive marketisation and of which casualisation of teaching and departmental staff budget slashing are symptoms. It does not benefit academics and, perhaps more importantly, it does not benefit students who are being forced to pay over the odds for their courses both at under- and postgraduate level.

The other point to be made is that Britain is catching the American sickness, unthinking worship of celebs and everything they have to say.

In the USA, Senators and Members of Congress are obliged to listen to the likes of Leonardo Di Caprio lectuing them about global warming, rising sea levels, drowning polar bears, the plight of the Great Barrier Reef and the grim future facing homeless dolphins

Can someone please please find the cute Louis Vuitton ad featuring AJ sitting in a rowboat and looking pensive, possibly somewhere in Cambodia?

mammothboy2 · Post by **mammothboy2** » Mon May 30, 2016 7:46 am

Without comment:

http://angies-place.clubs.nl/nieuws/det ... dia-forest

phuketrichard · Post by **phuketrichard** » Mon May 30, 2016 7:55 am

mammothboy2 wrote:Without comment:

http://angies-place.clubs.nl/nieuws/det ... dia-forest

now that was really a well researched piece;

The 28-year-old actress has said she fell in love with Cambodia

Personally i think she does much more good for the country than half the other supposedly ngo's, that seem to focus on sex and slavery

BTW plenty of people get honorary degrees

almafudd · Post by **almafudd** » Mon May 30, 2016 8:07 am

Why don't NGO's EMPLOY child actors to play the part of the poverty porn children for their fundraising activities?

The actors are happy (they get paid), society is happy (no exploitation of children) and the NGO is happy (they have their poverty porn advertising).

kiwiincambodia · Post by **kiwiincambodia** » Mon May 30, 2016 8:12 am

almafudd wrote:Why don't NGO's EMPLOY child actors to play the part of the poverty porn children for their fundraising activities?

The actors are happy (they get paid), society is happy (no exploitation of children) and the NGO is happy (they have their poverty porn advertising).

Wouldn't that cause more of an outrage against the NGO bashers?

I can hear the outcry already.....''Look, they hired an actor / actress and paid them when they have real children in these situations they could have used and paid money to....'' or something like that.

almafudd · Post by **almafudd** » Mon May 30, 2016 8:21 am

kiwiincambodia wrote:
almafudd wrote:Why don't NGO's EMPLOY child actors to play the part of the poverty porn children for their fundraising activities?

The actors are happy (they get paid), society is happy (no exploitation of children) and the NGO is happy (they have their poverty porn advertising).
Wouldn't that cause more of an outrage against the NGO bashers?

I can hear the outcry already.....''Look, they hired an actor / actress and paid them when they have real children in these situations they could have used and paid money to....'' or something like that.

Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN)
Article 16
You have the right to privacy.
Article 36
You have the right to protection from any kind of exploitation (being taken advantage of).

NGO's who use real children for fundraising or awareness are in breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in my opinion.